Tower Gateway DLR closes for rebuilding

As part of the three-car upgrade Tower Gateway DLR station will be closed from the end of service today until next April for a complete rebuild of the platform area.

The narrow island platform (pictured) will be replaced by a single track with platforms on both sides, of which you can see an artist's impression or download the planning application diagram. Departing passengers will wait on the south platform and arriving passengers will disembark onto the north platform.

While losing a platform gives the appearance of reducing capacity, the current track layout (effectively single track) means the two platforms can't be run at full capacity anyway, so the new layout should hopefully be no worse.

Tower Gateway's only service, to Beckton, has been curtailed to Poplar for the last couple of months, with the City Airport service diverted to serve Tower Gateway. This will be going back to Bank, which will be then be handling the same number of trains that it did before.

The existing main entrance won't be changed apart from getting brand new movement activated escalators, while the second entrance at the east end will be remodelled to only link to the departures platform. In the artist's impression there are passengers loitering at the east end of the arrivals platform, yet there is no exit there. I trust the BTP will be along shortly.